Various Linux distributions these days have started rolling out fancy GUIs to attract end users. Though this is a good strategy but working on Linux without understanding and using command line utilities is still not possible. Some one who uses Linux should know at least some basic commands that are required every now and then to accomplish trivial tasks. So, In this article, we will discuss a few commonly used (but must know) Linux commands with an example for each.

1. Linux ps command

This command is used to provide information on the current set of active processes in the system.

This command does the same as done by the key combination Ctrl+Shift+Esc or Ctrl+Alt+Del in Windows OS.

This command is usually used to check whether a particular process is running or not.

Also in some cases this command is used to fetch the details of a process when it hangs or stops responding.

The above ps command provided information on all the currently active processes in the system. Note that the flags -e and -f used in the above command were used to provide information on all processes and provide the details in full-format listing.
The ps command coupled with grep command becomes a tool to provide information related to a particular process very quickly. For example, to know about the Firefox process running in your system, just type :